I
am on the forefront of a new era of photography. I live in the
digital darkroom. All of my expertise is in the digital format.
I started learning the basics of Photoshop as soon as the software
was released. I was intrigued by it. I devoted all of my free
time to learning as much as I could about all possible ways
to use the software to restore and enhance pictures.

Through various classes, I became familiar with techniques to
collage and montage images. However, I soon realized that when
it comes to landscape and commercial photography, these techniques
could sometimes create an unrealistic or "fake" looking
image. So, I began a journey to seek out a way to make more
natural looking, subtle improvements. Photoshop allowed me this
outlet and I decided to start on a mission to master the software.

One of the first lessons I learned is "less is more".
The less I manipulate the images, the more effective it becomes.
In my opinion, over doing repair makes for a very unattractive
photographic work of art. I think there is nothing better, than
taking something straight from the camera that's perfectly exposed,
sharp, and has great color.

However, images like this are rare. Sometimes, weather conditions,
lighting or other factors will force you to have to do a certain
amount of manipulation to get your shot the way you visualized
it. Here is an example of a very high contrast shot I took at
noon, when the lighting was not optimal.

Because
the exposure range of this specific shot exceeds the dynamic
range of any film or digital camera, I took a second shot
exposing the sky.

Then
I ran the two images through a Photoshop Plugin called
Dynamic
Range Increase(DRI Pro), and here is how the
final
image looked.

It
is important to note, that the digital darkroom is not a miracle
worker. It can only do so much. If you bring a bad shot into
Photoshop, you will rarely take out a great piece of art.
If the photo is bad, it will remain bad. All good photographers
know this. My belief is that as photographers, we have the
responsibility to visualize the final image before the shooting
starts, and have the final product mirror that visualization.
In my opinion, Photoshop is just a tool for tweaking those
minor imperfections.

Most
of my time is now spent shooting, developing Photoshop
Plugins and Actions,
or working on my web page, fredmiranda.com. For the next
few weeks I plan on bringing you new and improved Photoshop
Techniques.
Until then, I will be where I always am -- living in the
digital darkroom.